Some years ago, I can't remember exactly when, my mom took me out shopping for my birthday. We went out for lunch, then went to my favorite places in town to shop. We wandered for a couple of hours and ended up in the craft store. I walked down the painting supply aisle and happened to pick up a pack of nice multimedia brushes. Deciding that I liked them, I walked off to find my mother, who met up with me in the calligraphy aisle to excitedly show me...the exact same set of brushes I had just picked up. You could have heard us laughing from the other side of the parking lot.
My mom and I have always had extremely similar personalities. She likes to joke that my grandmother would curse her to "have a child who is exactly the same as you", and that it came true with me. We both love nerding out over coffee and tea, old books and hand fans, science fiction and logic puzzles. We love not having to change out of our pajamas and having nice scented candles and a bright log fire in the fireplace. We both have the same silly excitement over the smallest of things, and when we're both angry, especially at each other, the rest of the house hunkers down as far away from us as they can until it eventually blows over.
My mom is a genius, as much as she'll deny it. She taught my siblings and me how to read and write our names before we went into preschool. She knows a ridiculous amount about all of the things she loves (ask her anything about calligraphy styles or the history of writing, I dare you). She could fix any problem I ever had with computers in our house and can solve a Rubix Cube in less than a minute if she's really trying. We always fully expect to wake up to some new gadget she's working with and a lively explanation as to what it is, what it does, and how it works, and I look forward to those moments even as I shake my head and smile.
I think my favorite thing about my mom is that no matter what I do, she is always my biggest supporter. On that birthday in the craft store, I'd expressed that I wanted to try painting, so she bought my paints and brushes and paper pad, and a little tabletop easel. When I said I wanted to be an actress, she helped me edit my resume for professional auditions, came to all of my shows, and cheered so loud during curtain call that I never had trouble finding my family in the audience. When I said I was writing a book, she was my first beta reader, my assistant editor, and my marketing team, telling everyone she met that her daughter had written a novel, have you seen it yet?
No one is perfect, but I think that my mother comes very close. Of course, my dad is just as amazing, and when Father's Day rolls around, I'll tell you all about him, but today is Mother's Day, and it's my mom's turn to shine. We may not always see eye to eye, but I will never be able to tell her how much I love her and appreciate everything she does for me. There aren't enough words in the English language for how much she means to me, and I can only hope that I can be half as good of a mother to my kids as she is to hers.
